If you teach high school English, you’ve seen this problem more and more lately. You’re reading essays, and they sound suspiciously polished or robotic. Students are using syntax that is so abnormal for 9th-12th grade that it stands out. You’re seeing papers with zero errors from students from whom you’d expect 10-20 errors per page. Student “voice” has all but disappeared, and what you get is formulaic “not this, but that” structures over and over with tons of bland, uninspired figurative language thrown in. When students use AI, their writing is bland, generic, and lacks depth. It feels surfacey and “fake thoughtful.”
Most of our students are now using AI to “help” them finish homework, classwork, and essay assignments. Obviously, essays are the MOST common assignments students will try to cheat/plagiarize/AI-generate. Just as before the rise of AI (back then, I uncovered the most cheating and plagiarism on essays), I’m uncovering the most AI-generated work on big essays as well.
With ubiquitous, free AI use, the traditional take-home or “typed” or “formal” essay, which was once the cornerstone of Literary Analysis, AP Literature, and English Language Arts instruction, has obviously become a problem. Instead of trying to fight (and not win) a battle against the use of technology and AI tools in my classroom, I decided to simply do more in-class writing assignments with my students.
Over the last 14 years, I transitioned more and more of my typed/formal/take-home essays over to timed, in-class, and essay test writing. First, it was because they were cheating by copying from SparkNotes and Yahoo Answers. Now, it’s because of Chat GPT and Grok. I must say, after making the transition, the difference has been HUGE. Not only have I had to deal with cheating, plagiarism, and AI-use referrals FAR LESS (saving me soooo many headaches and stressful days), but I now feel that my students are truly learning and growing as writers (rather than faking it and making no progress).
The Authenticity Problem We Cannot Ignore
We all know that when we let students work on essays either at home or even in class but using their school computers, they are accessing ChatGPT, essay mills, “help” from friends or parents that’s more like ghostwriting, and tools like Grammarly that rewrite their sentences until they are nothing like what the student can produce on his or her own. Now, students can even find paraphrasing tools that allow them to evade plagiarism-detection programs (including Grammarly itself and any LLM they choose). Even students with the best of intentions are finding themselves tempted to use “research assistance tools” in ways that are academically dishonest.
Lately, I’ve seen this most often with my students using ChatGPT to “get ideas” or “help me paraphrase” and with Grammarly’s “suggestions” for revision that take away student agency, encourage lazy thinking, and rinse student voice out of their papers. I have students who will even try to use their favorite LLM to come up with a simple 1-2 sentence thesis, not realizing that a 300-word “thesis” from ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok is NOT what I am asking them to brainstorm!!
In today’s classroom, I was catching 10x the cheating/plagiarism/AI tool use that I did in the years before the rise of free AI access online. It had me thinking: What about what I wasn’t catching? I realized that I was spending hours grading work that wasn’t done by my students, didn’t represent their abilities, and (frankly) wasn’t worth my time grading because a COMPUTER wrote it!! I was giving feedback on essays my students didn’t write, and I was realizing that when I didn’t catch it, that meant I had no reliable way to know who understood the skills/lessons I’ve taught, and who did not. As you can tell, this is a pretty dire situation: More and more students are going be graduating high school with a near-zero grasp of key ELA skills and ideas, like thesis development, textual analysis, or argumentative structure.
This isn’t about catching cheaters just so we feel satisfied we haven’t given anyone a grade he or she did not deserve. It’s deeper than that. It’s about the real purpose of writing instruction. We teach essay writing to develop our students’ critical thinking, analytical skills, and ability to articulate complex ideas. If you teach English/ELA, this stuff MATTERS to you. For most of us, it’s why we became ELA teachers. So it can be super demotivating and crushing when we realize it’s getting harder and harder to TEACH because AI is getting in the way. We all know that when the writing process happens in an uncontrolled environment with unlimited technological assistance, we are losing our ability to A) assess fairly and B) nurture the essential skills we’ve worked so long to master ourselves and pass on to the next generation.
Why In-Class Writing Is the Answer
The shift to timed, in-class essays may feel like going back in time, but it’s really a smart choice to tackle a very CONTEMPORARY problem. Plus, it offers tons of pedagogical benefits!!
Authentic Assessment: In-class writing provides undeniable proof that the work is genuinely that of the student. There’s no wondering, no suspicion, no time wasted running suspicious submissions through AI detectors. You can confidently assess what students actually know and can do when they wrote it in front of you. Imagine how FREEING it will be to NOT have to worry about or even think about whether your students’ writing is theirs or not?! Right?
Real-World Preparation: Despite what our students might think, timed writing under pressure is one of the most practical skills we can teach as English Lit & Comp/High School ELA teachers. College essay exams, standardized tests, professional certification exams, workplace writing with deadlines… all of these real-world scenarios require the ability to think and compose efficiently and from our students’ OWN minds. By shifting to timed writing, in-class essays, and even essay tests, we’re actually practicing, testing, and providing feedback on the writing skills students need TODAY, in THIS world. They need to learn how to write authentically if they want to stand out and possess true skills they can market. You cannot market “I can put something into an AI prompt box and copy and paste it somewhere else” because EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD CAN DO THAT TOO!!
Focused Instruction: When you know exactly which writing challenges students face, your teaching can be more focused and targeted. When we have our students writing in class, we can see what they are struggling to master in real-time. Not only can we go around the room and check in with random students and read over a few shoulders, but we can also simply ask them to stop for a moment, think, and then share aloud what they are wondering about or struggling with. Is the thesis an issue? Do they have an organization or citation question? Are they unsure how to find text evidence? When you have your kids write in class, you can keep real-time tabs on these things in a way you never could with at-home writing!
Equity and Fairness: In-class writing also levels the playing field. Not all students have the same access to technology, tutors, or family members who can “help” with essays at home. Classroom assessments ensure every student has the same resources and the same time to demonstrate his or her abilities. This has been an aspect of in-class writing that I’ve been very keyed into for over a decade, as I’ve always had a pretty large group of students who would use a parent, tutor, or older sibling to help with essays. When I switched to doing much more writing in class, I eliminated my own yucky feeling that some kids were getting an unfair advantage at home that I couldn’t always point to or address when grading. I don’t want to see what a student’s MOM or TUTUOR or COLLEGE-AGE SISTER can do… I want to see what my student can do! Right?
Concerns: What If You Think YOUR Students Can’t Write Timed Essays?
I always hear that some people are working with a student population that they think won’t be able to do timed writing, in-class essays, or essay tests. These teachers have tried it before, and students struggled, or they simply know that they have struggling writers who have very little practice with time constraints, and they worry about assigning a timed essay to these students with learning gaps. Trust me: This isn’t a reason not to switch to in-class writing. It just means we need to put in some prep with the kids so they CAN do it.
All students, not just those who struggle in school, have 504s or IEPs, or have learning gaps, actually NEED explicit/direct instruction in writing skills. This includes working on the unique skills that timed writing demands of them. They’ll need to know how to quickly analyze a prompt, how to outline in an efficient manner, how to manage their time (overall), and how to edit/revise in a reduced time frame. They’ll also need to understand that a timed essay or an essay test has some conventions that are a bit different than a long research paper or a formal/typed essay they work on for 1-2 weeks. Most important, they’ll need practice and plenty of scaffolding to help them gain confidence and be willing to try in the first place!
Whether you’re focused on the TIMED aspect of in-class writing, or you’re just going to have your high schoolers (9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade) do all of their writing in class, leaving it in your room when they leave for the day (so they cannot work on it at home), they’re going to need some materials and/or lessons on this type of writing. We are all afraid that our high schoolers “can’t” do timed writing, but that just means we shouldn’t throw them in the deep end without any swimming lessons!
If you want to break the whole process of in-class or timed essay writing down into manageable steps that ANY student can handle, try my How-To Guide for High School In-Class Essays. It will give you the FRAMEWORK/SCAFFOLDING your students need in one student-friendly, 4-page packet that walks your kids through every stage of timed essay writing, from analyzing prompts to managing time effectively to avoiding common pitfalls. It even covers voice, style, and editing issues!
The mini-packet/handout helps you teach ANY group of high schoolers how to tackle in-class writing. It combines explicit instruction (lessons/direct teaching) with practical strategies students can use to help them succeed when they are under time pressure. You will use the handouts as a lesson guide at first, going over the advice with your students, and then you’ll let them keep the packet and use it as a reference later on as they are writing subsequent in-class or timed essays. My students pull these out with EVERY essay assignment, and many keep it to refer to in 12th grade or even before a college essay test! I even let my AP students have these on their desks when they write their first few timed essays (as prep for the AP Lit exam).
A guide like this is essential because it quickly (and in student-friendly language/bite-sized bits) covers prompt analysis, thesis development, outlining, body paragraph construction, style/editing, and even intros and conclusions! And it’s all geared toward writing within timed conditions. It can also work across essay types, from literary analysis/critical lens/novel studies to argumentative, persuasive, or expository/informational. Plus, you can edit in/out anything you wish to add to match your particular essay assignment(s)!
Grab my How-To Guide for High School In-Class Essays here!
How to Teach In-Class Essays
Transitioning to more in-class writing doesn’t mean abandoning all take-home work or eliminating process writing entirely. Here’s what you can do…
Use in-class essays for high-stakes assessment: When grades matter most, ensure authenticity through supervised writing conditions. If an essay is going to be worth 100+ points, I’m doing it in class now. If it’s practice, worth 10-20 points, I’m more likely to do something on the computers or that they can take home, as lower point values usually mean students feel less pressure to cheat, copy, plagiarize, or use AI in the first place. (Note: I do all timed essays/essay tests/in-class writing on paper, as my students have found workarounds for using AI tools even when our school tries to block them on the computers.)
Build skills progressively: Start with shorter timed responses (paragrahs, CER/CEA) and gradually increase length and complexity as students develop proficiency. You can try doing timed writing with just one paragraph (try CER paragraphs!) at first, build to maybe a short intro and 1-2 body paragraphs, then try an intro and 3 bodies, and then go to the intro + conclusion + 3-or-more body paragraphs.
Teach the writing process explicitly: Don’t assume students know how to write essays, and don’t assume high schoolers have experience writing under time pressure. Provide clear instruction, modeling, and practice opportunities. Use the “how to” handout as a helpful guide, and try other lessons, like “How to Write Strong Intros and Conclusions” or “How to Write a Good Hook” to ensure they have models and clear guidance before they try writing on their own.
[All of my essay/writing lessons can be found here!]
Create a supportive environment: Many students will feel (and express) anxiety about timed writing or essay testing. Reduce those anxious feelings by framing timed writing as a learnable skill rather than a test of their innate writing ability. Give your students resources, like the “how to write timed essays” guide/handout, and let them use these resources AS THEY WRITE. I usually only have them do an essay test or timed write WITHOUT these tools at the very end of the year, after they’ve practiced 10+ times!
Don’t ditch process/formal/typed writing: Obviously, we still need to do writing activities like typed and cited literary analysis essays, research papers (informative, argumentative), and other long-term writing. You can either grade these in small chunks for small point values (this helps discourage cheating) & using plenty of written planning pages/graphic organizers to encourage students to use their own minds rather than AI, or you can keep the large-point final paper assignment BUT have students leave all of their work in the room and only work on things while you’re supervising. It helps to have them write everything by hand and type at the end. I like to “chunk” the writing process and give small (5-10 point) grades along the way with “writing checks” where I skim their work.
PS: Timed writing is STILL “process writing” because students still need to brainstorm, plan, draft, and edit/revise!!
Teaching AP Lit?
These AP Lit essay-writing lessons tie to in-class/timed writing for AP-level high schoolers: Q1, Q2, and Q3 essay practice + PowerPoint lessons.
Authentic Writing Matters Now More Than Ever
Teaching English/Language Arts/Lit & Comp hasn’t changed this much since we first started using computers in the classroom! (For me, we didn’t have 1-to-1 until 2012, so I had experience having students write everything by hand…) Things are changing, and we have to change, too, if we want to prepare our students for the future.
Take-home essays and long, typed essays using computer tools and research are too UNRELIABLE for VALID ASSESSMENT nowdays. It’s going to be okay though! In-class writing allows for the fun kind of teaching where we see students think, struggle, improve, and succeed. It also offers students the challenge they need to be ready for the 21st-century opportunities waiting at the end of their high school journey!
Of course, students will need structured guidance if we want to take something that might be a bit scary for them and make it manageable and fun. As mentioned above, my editable, 4-page resource (the How-To Guide for High School In-Class Essays) provides the explicit instruction and scaffolding that helps ALL students produce well-structured, thoughtful essays, even under time constraints! It’s accessible, clear, and concise, workable for students in grades 9-12.
We all love teaching, so let’s focus on teaching students to master the skills they REALLY need, skills technology like AI can’t replicate: AUTHENTIC THINKING; PERSONAL VOICE; THE ABILITY TO SYNTHESIZE AND ARTICULATE HUMAN IDEAS, EMOTIONS, AND VALUES… In-class essays are the way to do this! So let’s try it!
Download the How-To Guide for High School In-Class Essays NOW, and I promise you a few things: You’ll watch your students’ confidence and competence in timed writing improve dramatically. You’ll love that you get back to authenticity and integrity when it comes to writing assessment in your classroom, and you’ll REALLY love not having to worry whether they used AI, cheated, or plagiarized as you read their work!
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How have you combatted AI use in your classroom?? Drop a comment below!
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Related Posts You Might Love:
- Combatting AI Cheating and Plagiarism: Strategies for Teachers (HUGE BLOG POST)!
- Using outlines
- Writing and essays (blog posts)
- Using graphic organizers for pre-writing and planning
- Teaching CER paragraphs (improved arguments and body paragraphs)
- Writing lessons and activities
About the Author: Carly Lamp has taught English 11/English III (American Lit) for 13 years & AP Literature for 10 years. She creates thorough, thoughtful, and rigorous materials, units, and resources for high school English teachers through both her blog and her TPT store (both named English with Mrs. Lamp). She LOVES teaching writing and helping new teachers and homeschool parents teach with confidence!
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